Laird Hunt's novels include Neverhome, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, an IndieNext selection, winner of the Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine and The Bridge prize, and a finalist for the Prix Femina Etranger.Here Hunt dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, In the House in the Dark of the Woods:
There is a scene in David Lynch’s Inland Empire in which one of Laura Dern’s characters (she plays two) comes running around a dark curve in slow motion. As she is approaching the camera everything suddenly speeds up and — wearing an expression that seems forged from rage, terror and a just the slightest vermouth splash of bewilderment — Dern seems to leap toward the lens as if she were going to devour it and us and maybe the world entire. This scene and many others make me think Dern would float easily through the horror-lit New England woods in my novel, either as the central protagonist, Goody, or as one of the older women she finds in that dark place: a wolf-cape wearing piece of seriously complicated work called Captain Jane.Visit Laird Hunt's Facebook page and Twitter perch.
If Dern were unavailable, or, better, to keep Dern company, I might dream-cast Chloë Sevigny in one of those roles, or as the character Eliza, the current occupant of the titular house in the woods, who keeps her darkness somewhat under control until the novel’s final pages. The Sevigny of Lizzie Borden is what I have in mind here. Someone who knows her way around a kiss and an axe.
My Book, The Movie: Neverhome.
--Marshal Zeringue
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